Black Americans have made remarkable
progress in recent decades. The income levels of black households
have tripled over the past 24 years, and the number of black-owned
businesses more than doubled between 1987 and 1997. If these
trends hold, racial economic parity may become reality in the
not-too-distant future.

But not if the Environmental
Protection Agency (EPA) has anything to say about it.

For progress in the black community
to continue, the government must allow a free economy where businesses
can grow and consumers can accumulate wealth. At the same time,
the government must ensure its policies are not harmful to the
environment. In the past, however, policies that realized environmental
and economic goals were not thought possible - a trade-off was
always made between the two.

It was with this trade-off
in mind that the EPA implemented the Clean Air Act Amendments
(CAAA) of 1990. They set acceptable limits on the emissions of
certain air pollutants. They also outline specific programs state
governments and private businesses must comply with to reduce
air pollution. The EPA believes its restrictions on business
are necessary to provide Americans with cleaner and healthier
air.

But this trade-off is not necessary.
Air quality levels across the country are improving dramatically,
but these improvements are often not due to the government's
anti-pollution regulations. In addition to being unnecessary,
the CAAA are also extremely flawed in their factual foundation
and the policies they prescribe. As implemented, they may be
the most expensive and flawed piece of environmental legislation
in American history.

The "one-size-fits-all"
approach of the CAAA is inappropriate since the levels and causes
of air pollution - as well as meteorological conditions - vary
widely between different regions. Therefore, the best and least-intrusive
environmental regulations are those designed to suit specific
regions. For example, it is not logical that, in the middle of
January, the same air quality control program can effectively
address problems in both Minneapolis and Miami.

This same flawed methodology
is present at a narrower level, too. For example, the CAAA imposes
the same maintenance and inspection regulations on all cars.
Yet the EPA acknowledges that only "ten to 30% of cars are
causing the majority of the vehicle-related pollution problems."1
It would be much more effective to focus and tailor policy to
only apply to the few, primarily older, cars that create the
majority of the pollution.

But, in targeting older cars,
the EPA risks unfairly imposing more regulatory pressure on urban
and minority populations. In economically depressed areas, residents
tend to have older cars that are not maintained as well as the
average vehicle. While there is no doubt that these cars are
greater contributors to air pollution, no adjustments currently
exist to ease the economic pressure that is imposed on these
residents to repair or replace their cars.

Similar flaws are present in
the data that forms the premise for the CAAA. To design the CAAA,
the EPA examined the severity of air pollution in various metropolitan
areas in 1988.2 The amount of air quality-improving regulations
that a city must administer depends on how poor the region's
air quality was at that time. Climatologically, 1988 was a dramatically
hot and dry year - to record-breaking degrees in many areas.
Therefore, air pollution levels were also unusually high. In
using this data as the norm, the CAAA imposes unnecessarily high
levels of regulation. When one takes into consideration that
the levels of regulations are high based on flawed data, it is
not a stretch to say that these mandates are oppressive.

One specific problematic provision
of the CAAA is the Reformulated Gasoline (RFG) requirement. RFG
is blended to burn more completely and evaporate less than conventional
gasoline, supposedly creating less pollution. A key feature of
RFG is oxygenates, which are meant to increase the combustion
efficiency of gasoline and reduce carbon monoxide (CO) emissions.
The only two realistic oxygenate alternatives are MTBE and ethanol,
but neither are examples of good policy in practice. A 1999 report
conducted by the National Academy of Sciences conclude that such
oxygenates "do little to reduce smog."3 They also damage
both the environment and the economy.

Scientists have linked MTBE
to cancer, reproductive and developmental issues, increased incidences
of asthma, general adverse effects on the central nervous system,
liver abnormalities, damage to the tissues of the heart and other
similar effects.4 What makes the situation scarier is that a
large quantity of MTBE has already managed to seep into the environment.
In fact, MTBE is the most widely-detected gasoline compound found
in Northeast drinking water supplies.

Ethanol creates similar problems,
including increased emissions of acetaldehyde - a probable human
carcinogen - by up to 70%.5

Beyond environmental problems,
the Department of Energy's Energy Information Administration
estimates the increased costs an ethanol-mandate would impose
would force consumers to pay $5 billion more for gas in 2005
than they do today.6

In the case of RFG, not only
are poorer Americans being forced to spend a higher percentage
of their incomes to pay for them, but they are also the segment
of the population most likely to suffer the most from the environmental
harm they cause. Urban areas, where gas stations abut apartments
and homes, pose a significant risk of poisonous RFG infecting
residents. The concentration of air pollution due to factors
like vehicle exhaust is also higher in these urban areas.

Meanwhile, other parts of the
CAAA are simply unreasonable. Electric cars are one such provision.
Battery packs cost $10,000 and must be replaced after only a
few years of use. Drivers must also recharge current batteries
approximately every 100 miles, a process that takes several hours.
This constant need to recharge batteries is not convenient for
business use and makes such cars unreliable. In a family emergency,
who would want to have to depend on such a car? Even the type
of informal electric vehicle mandate endorsed by the CAAA will
need to be subsidized by price increases for other cars so manufacturers
can comply with them. Such cost increases could cost consumers
an additional $1,000 per car. Again, the hard-working consumer
is punished for an ill-thought government program.

The CAAA's expensive, poorly-designed
and time-consuming vehicle inspection and maintenance program
(IM240) punishes consumers as well. Consistent with the fact
that a small percentage of cars create the majority of air pollution
is the fact that over half of the potential emissions reductions
from IM240 come from the small fraction of cars that fail the
test. To subject every single vehicle in the nation to the exact
same tests is, therefore, impractical. Thus, the benefits of
the program come purely from its scope, not from its efficiency.

Another flaw with this one-size-fits-all
approach is that not all cars can accurately be tested in the
same way. Older cars do not emit consistent levels of emissions.
According to the General Accounting Office, over a quarter of
the vehicles that failed the initial emissions test passed a
second one, even though no repairs were made.7 This proves that
heavily-polluting vehicles simply cannot be diagnosed efficiently
and accurately through such "snapshot" tests.

As stated earlier, even with
improvement, these regulations are essentially outdated and unnecessary.
Because cars produced today are over 90% cleaner than those produced
just a couple of decades ago, smog levels throughout the country
have dramatically improved. The mandates also fail to take into
account the disproportionate pollution caused by older vehicles.
A vast program regulating every car would be better designed
to just regulate older cars.

The effects of today's cleaner-running
cars can already be observed in the net reduction in pollution
levels outside of California between 1985-87 and 1992-93 of 57%.8
If current trends continue and cleaner cars continue to replace
older ones, emissions levels in most regions can reach the CAAA's
"target" emissions levels by 2005 without the oppressive
measures that the amendments impose.

At a price somewhere between
$25 and $35 billion dollars, these flawed, damaging and unnecessary
Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 are the most expensive piece
of environmental legislation ever enacted.9 And one group of
Americans especially hard hit by them are African-Americans.

By imposing heavy restrictions
on behaviors thought to produce air pollution, the standards
by which existing businesses operate are raised by the regulations
and new barriers for people who want to go into business for
themselves are erected. They discriminate against black entrepreneurs
who have a small pool of resources with which to start their
businesses. Going so far as to regulate emissions from dry cleaners,
bakeries and other small businesses, the adverse economic effects
can provide an especially heavy blow to all African-Americans.
Blacks who try to start a business tend to pay higher initial
costs, while those already in business must pay higher operating
costs. These higher operating costs also force black consumers
to pay more money.

These high prices and operating
costs could compromise the economic progress made by African-Americans
in recent decades. As mentioned before, today's black Americans
operate more businesses and are wealthier than ever before, causing
the racial economic gap to close rapidly. However, the CAAA take
money away from minorities. Therefore, rather than being able
to continue to invest their money in activities that will help
them someday to achieve the racial parity for which they have
fought for so long, they must instead help fund an oppressive,
flawed and completely unnecessary program. In this way, the EPA
threatens black progress.